Alec is finally completed and is ready. He is a co-protagonist for a comic-animation project. He is a humanoid dragon that lives a modern world inhabited by anthropomorphic animals. This model was made for both animation and as a reference for the comic. I went all the way and made his face very dragon like, removing all the human elements (with the exception of the eyes) such as hair and eyebrows. Gave him a dragon snout. Shrunk his eyes, added many horns, changed the ears to make them more fin like. Added a bone jaw. Curved out his neck and made the connection on the back of the skull (like a reptile) instead of connecting to the bottom of the cranium (like a human). Added the textures to the model. I wanted his face to scream ‘Dragon’ despite being humanoid and having no wings. Originally Alec’s skin color was a golden orange but I changed it to white for two reasons. It’s more readable, and since he’s a dragon which is usually associated with ‘monster’, giving him white scales associates him with ‘good’ since that is what the trope tells us, it kinda a balancing act.

It might seem odd to have a dragon as a main protagonist instead of a villain or loyal steed. There seems to be two stereotypes for dragons in popular media, one is that of a ruthless monster ( usually the main villain) that is usually burning down villages, capturing damsels, and sleeping on bucket loads of treasure (AKA Beowulf, St George). The other stereotype is that a dragon is the equivalent of a loyal pet steed aka “man’s best scaly friend” (AKA How to Train Your Dragon). Alec fits into neither of those stereotypes but has to deal with them on a daily basis. However Alec’s personality is ‘dragon’ like. Most of the humor with be about the stereotypes and cliches in our culture and flipping it on it’s head. For example, the two main protagonists are a dragon and a cheetah, the main villains in the project is a rabbit and a mouse. I intentionally flipped the roles. Why are deceased infested rodents that spreed plague and death considered heroes in popular fiction? Why are lizards and reptiles the bad guys in films, when in real life most reptiles are pretty docile? Why is a domesticated dog character never the villain but there are plenty of villainous domesticated cat characters?

You might of notice that I have had been developing two different dragon characters for two separate unrelated projects. At first they both look very different but as I got better drawing dragons the two characters looks have merged together. The major difference is that Chris is a more traditional western style dragon that walks on all fours. Alec is a humanoid with a dragon’s head and tail.

I’ve also included a turnaround of the model so you can see him at different angles, a some facial expression tests. I was also curious if Alec’s design would allow him to stand on all fours. To my surprise, he can. I could think of some good gags with him doing this. It’s rather odd thing to see. Cruz the Cheetah is next on my list to finish.

The last render is a test pose with Alec sitting. For fun I used my own paintings as decorations for the wall 🙂

I’ve been out of town for a few days on vacation so i haven’t been working on any new pieces. I have been sketching and doodling before I went to sleep. One sketch is that of portrait of my dragon character Chris on my iPad using Procreate. I liked how it came out, thought I would share it with you.

Looks like Cruz and Alec are in a pickle now 😀 . Despite my models not being finished. I couldn’t wait to try them out to make sure they ‘work’ well. I had way too much fun making this 🙂 I used some old rejected models below Alec, you might recognize some of them. I thought since I put so much time in them I might as use them at least once so they don’t go to waste 🙂

3d model WIP model for Cruze that ‘other’ protagonist. Cruz is the more spontaneous, easy going type compared to Alex who is all ‘Serious Business'(I can’t believe I quoted a meme, no wonder I am forever alone 🙂 ). In the design process I decided shorts would be the best choice for Cruze to wear, because my friend, rain, snow, or shine will be wearing shorts! His ancestry must have polar bear genes. The shoes are place holders and will be changed.

First page of my short comic story. Originally this was going to be the second page. I did a page that was detailed about the world, but it reviled too much too soon.
Created in Photoshop.
Time Spent 2 hours.

I also setup a blog for this comic project at “asgaut.wordpress.com“. I will be uploading the pages to both blogs. I was planing ahead a way for people that would like to read the comic beginning to end with ease.

Portrait of the fictional Character Booker Dewitt, the protagonist of Bioshock Infinite. I haven’t played the game yet and the only two decent references I could find was the box art and a concept image. Wanted to draw Booker at a different angle and different lighting, since it has little benefit for me to just copy someone’s painting. It was a more difficult painting aft first until I found the official concept art . Booker looks very anime-ish in the concept art, I attempted to render him more realistically in my painting.

This weeks portrait theme will be fictional characters in video games.

Booker Dewitt is a character in Bioshock Infinite Copyright 2013 Irrational Games
Painting is Copyright 2013 Maugryph.

A quick value sketch of my understanding of a rugged macho man. You know the kind that would fit perfectly in a badly made Hollywood action flick. The hero who never shaves yet looks fantastic. Always fighting the bad guys while keeping the woman at bay. ‘The Lancer’ I think hes called if I have my tropes right.